Ok for 35K i would suggest just buying on a steep discount and then reselling them. Feel free to shoot me an email if you want to talk more about buying in bulk.

Well you cant really just say i lost Dollars. in mining you have to correlate to the BTC you put in because that is what you are getting in return. but since the price goes up and down, and then you try to correlate to dollars it is not truly apples to apples you know?

Right on, here are the answers.

This is not a direct correlation. Hashpower:$per chip is not a correlation AT ALL. It really comes down to things like
Is there ram on a chip. Sha-256 chips DO NOT have ram. Meaning that these chips will be cheaper in general.
Secondly, the physical package size matters on cost.
Is your chip 11mmx11mm or is it 30mmx30mm. The bigger the chip the more expensive.
However, a bigger chip does NOT mean a faster chip. Realistically there are several things that come into play here for cost and none of which are correlated to hashpower.

This is heavily dependent and almost solely dependent on the RTL. If it is a good RTL and well though out, the architectech would have put in alot of thought into how to reduce the RAM package size (in the case of a scrypt chip) so he can fit what he needs on a smaller package size. Also, how the chip operates is important too. Things like BUS size and things of that nature really play more of a roll into how fast a chip is.
not sure what you are meaning here. If you are saying it does not matter from a cost standpoint, that cannot be the case. However, I think I am just misunderstanding what you are saying here. Elaboration for my mental slowness would be appreciated.
If you are asking where to go to buy physical chips then the answer is... it depends.
Every chip has it's own pros and cons.
Things to consider for a chip are as follows
+Power Consumption
+Speed
+Form Factor
+Heat Output
+PCB Design
+Cost
+Quality**
**These are for chips in a general sense. In crypto Quality is not generally an issue because product life span is very short due to obsolescence


Now what is more important to you is different from person to person.
For instance, if you get free electricity, you do not care how efficient the chip is and how much power draw it uses. However, if you are getting charged a high price on electrical, this should be your paramount goal.

SPEED IS RELATIVE!
I want to let everyone know that speed is relative. If you have a chip the size of a bitfury chip (small as hell) that runs lets say 1 MH/s and you have a chip 10x the size and it runs at 9.9MH/s these chips still cannot be compared. Just because one is bigger and faster and one is smaller and slower and the bigger one is < 10 smaller chips still means squat.
In order to evaluate speed you need to think about how well the PCB design is. If you have a huge chip, probably going to put 1 or two chips on the board. You can put more small chips on a board, but them cooling may be an issue. So this is where form factor comes into play.

The thing i love about the spondoolies board's are that they are so freaking well thought out. The squeeze a boat load of chips on a big PCB and then overlay the heatsinks accordingly so you can stack alot of stuff on top. This leads to a small form factor but with a higher cost due to their awesome R&D.

So, if you want to answer the below questions (not even necessarily for your use case but just a generalized one) I could point you in the best direction. Generally speaking, when buying alot of hardware, it is always best to do it through a friend of the manufacturing company. Otherwise, those guys do not give anybody the time of day just because folks are hitting them up all the time and they have work to do.


Questions:
What is your electricity rates per KWh?
How Much money do you want to invest?
Do you need PCB also?
Do you have enclosures ready or do you want to buy them?
What kind of place do you customers generally want to put their machines in? (big machines that pull alot of power wont work in the average house)

Yeah when the price dips, and you bought in high that is alwasy the risk no matter what. So, that is not really a fair evaluation IMHO.

DrG,

Thanks for the reply bro.

Company Info:
http://www.bizapedia.com/wy/FINALHASHCOMLLC.html
We are incorporated in Wyoming but operate mostly out of Texas and Abroad.

As far as the website goes it is www.finalhash.com although I'll warn you it has not been updated in a long while due to the entire company being slammed with all of our projects.

As far as what we do, kind of a very broad answer would be "everything"

Generally, we are always background players. Hence, the one day old Bitcointalk account. However, some of our projects include:
+Exchange operation (private customers only)
+Crypto Tech Consultation (I personally do alot of consulting on new crypto chips coming out) and other things along those lines like pool fixes and things where people need a helping hand where my swat team goes in and saves the day.
+We have our FinCen MSB license--> you can guess what that is used for
+We run the Hashers United conference circuit (the inaugural one being this october in vegas) www.hashersunited.com
+BTC investment advising

and alot more stuff

if you have questions you can always email me directly (email should be visible on my account here)

TBH we generally do not dabble in consumer hardware sales in the typical sense. We are not an ASIC retailer. I mean sometimes we will proxy big deals for direct manufacturer pricing but only for folks who are close friends in the industry. So as far as goods we offer, hardware would not be one of them, however generally we do play a roll in the sales cycle upstream.

Questions?

Great questions.

Let me start of first by laying out two scenarios for you.

Scenario 1: Making your own chips

Firstly, the name manufacturer may be a bit of a misnomer.

The process in ANY chip production life cycle is as follows.

Step1: Find a really smart person to make you what is known as an RTL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register-transfer_level
          This is essentially the ground work for telling the chip what you want it to do. Think of it as sort of the firmware of the chip.
          RTL is generally either written in VHDL or verilog.

Step2: Once you have your RTL completed, you need to compile it to an FPGA. Now I am sure you all remember the FPGA days of bitcoin machines. FPGA's in a general sense are just prototype boards that you can plug in your RTL into in order to make sure it works. So in the case of a crypto RTL, generally folks compile their RTL on something like a XILINX FPGA so they can validate their design. This is why you get many asic companies showing off their FPGA boards at the beginning stages. This illustrates, generally, proof of concept. So if their RTL works, they can partially compile a small number of cores to execute their RTL and in the case of crypto, these RTLs mine coins. So if your fpga mines or even accepts shares, you are golden from an  RTL standpoint.

Step3: Initiate backend design. Now this backend design can constitute many things. Whether that is making the PCB design, or makeing the mask design.  Essentially it is at this point that  virtually all ASIC manufacturers outsource this part to the experts. Experts being companies that have years of experience doing backend design for ASICs of all kinds. So, the most notable one IMHO would be Innosilicon in China. They do tons of tape outs for many industries inside and outside of crypto.  At this point you would tell them you want a 28NM chip or whatever transistor size you want and give them the RTL. They will validate again, and create the backend and PCB (if not already designed) and then essentially send off what is known as a GDS to a foundry.

Step4:  The foundry will take the GDS and make what is known as the mask. The mask is pretty much what it sounds like. It is a piece of material they will lay on top of the Silicon Wafer and then after various processes including, doping, and photoetching, create the asics.  This mask is very valuable and where most of the money in a tape out comes into play.  With it, you can make that chip.

Step5:  If you use a notable backend company to do your design, then generally there is no need for a so-called engineering batch.  Most well-known companies will merge your RTL with their tried and true backend to make it a sure fire home run. If you do a engineering batch, it is because you are using an untested backend design where making a full scale production run may be a waste of money if you need to make tweaks to the backend. So, the chips are made, the PCB is made, now just assemble it, put a power supply in an enclosure, and sell it right? NOPE!

Step6:  This is where some really important things come for global commerce. Firstly, if you do not have all the regulatory clearings from some big names in safety, some countries will block your equipment in customs. This is generally a must-do although there are some "creative" ways around this. Also, you need to test the chips yourself to make sure it performs as expected. Also, you need to develop your drivers for the machine. So if you are running a raspberry pi as a controller, you have to make a driver so CGminer can recognize it along with maybe making your own fork off cgminer. Then comes the task of making it user friendly with some sort of webGUI.

That is generally the process. Now as far as cost goes here is a break down.
NOTE: the larger the transistor size, the cheaper the manufacturing process. The prices below are for 28NM however if you go 20NM or 16NM these prices will surely go up ten-fold

RTL:  50,000-100,000 USD depending on if you do it or if you hire someone (generally just a salary)
Backend:  300,000 USD
PCB Design: 10,000USD
Mask Making:  1.1M USD
Chip Cost per chip:(greatly varies on many things)
things that affect chip price are:
RAM TYPE:  ECC or Non-ECC
RAM AMOUNT
Number of Cores
Number of Layers
Generally speaking for a crypto chip the price per chip varies. For a SHA-256 chip there is generally no RAM in these chips. so these chips are cheaper. Now scrypt chips and others require alot of ram so they are more expensive. With that being said chips can range from $2-$15 each.

So you must pay for the number of batch1 chips

All in all the total cost comes to around 3M USD give or take..

Scenario 2: Buying Chips

Generally this can be a good idea because of cost savings, however, if will need to proper logistics in order to physically get those chips on a PCB and hook them up to a controller of some kind. If you have those avenues sorted already, it may be a good move. However, if not, it will quickly get hairy.

Hopefully this answered some questions

BRUCELLA you are absolutely correct. I am the CTO of finalhash and good friends with Marco. I just sent him this and said WTF? He responded and said pretty much, "Oh that is a bug, thanks for the heads up."  He went on to say that he and his team are working to fix the bug and he would comment back here with the result.

Good catch bro.  It is important for educated crypto folks like yourself to keep finding discrepancies in this to see how the company responds going forward.  In this way we hold them accountable and thereby avoid future BFL things. However, it is important that we do the double checks but also allow time for the companies to respond you know?

How do you mean you cannot trust any cloud mining companies? Whilst I do agree there is alot of stuff out there that is nothing short of a scam or ponzi, I do personally think IMHO that there is a place for cloud mining.  As CTO of FinalHash (although i just created a bitcointalk account today, <-- straight newb i know) i get the gamut of customers. While we do have plenty of folks who want to be more in control of their units, there are also others who simply don't care. Generally I classify customers into 5 groups.

1. The "I love crypto but my wife hates the heat and the noise" customers. Me personally, I fall into this category so all of my stuff is offsite. Better than sleeping on the couch if you ask me.
2. The "I am new and just wanted to play around with the idea of mining for a quick set up" customer.
3. Enthusiast customers who know alot about the crypto space but simply do not have the space or power or low enough electrical costs to warrant getting physical hardware at their locale.
4. Customers who want the hardware shipped, which I think is safe to say cloverme is this type.
5. The fat cats who just say take my money I don't care.


While i do agree with you here also, I think this is far to broad of a generalization to say just buy hardware due to a number of reasons.

1. So many people are newcomers to crypto and more often than not their first hearing of crypto was of a nepharious nature. AKA BFL or something similar. Folks are always hesitant in new endeavors. That is just human nature. So spending $30-40 just to try something is generally a lower obstacle over all than taking a risk on waiting to see if a machine comes.

2. for some of the reason mentioned above. Most ASICS I dub the divorce makers.


Really if you look at it, their intended market is everyone. I mean every company in the history of ever if asked, "If you had your ideal market who would it be" All of their answers would echo something to the effect of "EVERYONE IN THE WORLD" So, in the general sense it behooves every company to try and accommodate every market share, right?  Genesis Mining is no different. I think they are working on some refactors of the interface from what has been circulating on redding and the like, and also something called Project X. I mean when you really think about it, there is no "target market" for large companies, right?

You seem to be highly educated in the crypto space cloverme and it is important for educated individuals like your self to be scrupulous on such matters as to better inform the larger less informed community at large. I would love to hear your thoughts on my comments here. The more Highly Educated crypto folks that can dig down into things like this, the less likely folks are to run into another BFL scenario so I truly encourage this well though out counterpoint of yours.